


thank you (thank you so much)

by debeauharnais



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, One Shot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, can also be read as blake/scho very easily, did i just accidentally post this on valentine's day? maybe so, i love this film too much i haven't stopped thinking about it in two weeks someone punch me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22707391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debeauharnais/pseuds/debeauharnais
Summary: For a long time, there’s nothing.And then, one quiet day behind the lines, a reinforcement disturbs the peace of the meadow.
Relationships: Tom Blake & William Schofield
Comments: 19
Kudos: 76





	thank you (thank you so much)

**Author's Note:**

> note: when writing this, i didn't yet know scho and blake were in the 8th's east surrey regiment, hence the headcanon that he was formerly in the reserve army. i still think it's a lovely idea, even if i don't believe it anymore, and won't edit it out of this fic, but just so you know! :)
> 
> i've seen this film four times and i'm soft and in love and i couldn't get the question of why a veteran with at least 7 months front-line experience would be such close friends with a bright-eyed, baby-faced, innocent recruit, and where the rest of their friends were bc they seem so isolated, and how blake could be the same rank as him in the first place, out of my head - and then this happened! ♡
> 
> (and tbh i just love the idea that they're sort of outcasts on the fringes of the company bc scho can only handle blake and blake is too much of an annoying chatterbox for anyone else to like having around, they're my favourite mismatched pair in the world)
> 
> there's one or two references in this to personal headcanons i've established in my own mind after a bit of research, mainly that, since only the reserve army fought at thiepval, schofield was previously a private with them and requested a transfer after the battle because he couldn't face going back with all his friends dead; and that blake arrived sometime after the 18th of december 1916.
> 
> also, just a few little tidbits that might be interesting: george mackay believes scho is from cookham, berkshire, so that’s his home village in my mind as well; the 8th would go on to fight in passchendaele from july to november 1917, so there's every horrible possibility that he served in that battle; and, since lance corporals were typically the second-in-commands or heads of sections, of which there were 4 within each platoon, each comprising 12 soldiers, it's likely blake and schofield were in command of different sections in the same platoon. which i find pretty cute tbh.
> 
> anyway, enjoy!! ♡

For a long time, there’s nothing.

He’s never exactly been one for friends in the first place, always been content to drift quietly and gently on the fringes of companionship and smile along to noisy bluster, but he’d had a few. There’d been three of them, a little band of oddities who’d been too loud or too soft, too bookish or too daring, too playful or too withdrawn. Poets and thinkers and bruisers and dreamers. He’d met one of them in training and the others in his first week at the front, and they’d helped. Helped with the homesickness and the fleas and the first time he saw a corpse.

And then had come Thiepval. Then had come the shelling and the white-hot terror and the awful confusion in that mess of black, shattered trenches.

Any last vestiges of childhood had vanished there. Any last vestiges of innocence and beauty and joy in the face of this grand new adventure had been picked out of him like thread and left to leech into the mud, left to waft out into the grey air like brittle smoke.

After that, he was alone.

After that, they wrote him down as _wounded – shock, shell_ in their dispatches and that earned him the wounded stripe for his left sleeve more than the gas still rattling around his lungs.

After that, they made a Lance Corporal of him and held a rushed little ceremony beside his white, squeaking bed.

After that, standing silhouetted against an open window with a warm breeze drifting through the lace curtains and the bees buzzing around the flowers in the hospital garden, he requested a transfer from the Reserve Army to the 8th and was granted it.

After that, he was back in a new trench on a new stretch of the Western Front with a hundred new faces who wouldn’t last a week.

After that, he stopped speaking.

He was pleasant enough. Never rude. Always had a small, empty smile for the cook and the orderlies who handed out the mail. Men tried to befriend him, tried to ask where he was from, and what type of jam he liked most when he was a child, and what it was really like at the Somme. He answered in soft, drifting half-words but he never quite heard them, and soon enough they started to leave him alone.

On his first week of leave after the hospital, he went home.

On the second, he didn’t.

He stayed in France, and lost his medal to a French captain, and sat against the back wall of a little dusty-windowed inn until the owner nudged his shoulder and told him it was closing time. He’d left the untouched glass of ale on the table and staggered out into the night air on numb legs and found himself back in his rented room with no memory of how he’d gotten there or what the streets had looked like on the way. He’d sat down on the peach blankets of the bed in his warm, gloomy bedroom, drunk on nausea with no alcohol in his blood, and that was the first time he woke up enough to cry.

His wife stopped writing.

And for a long time, there’s nothing.

The front and rotation back behind the lines.

The front and rotation back behind the lines.

 _You ought to move on,_ he’d shouted at his wife on the last night at home, voice high and dry and strangled, because he’d been so afraid and she’d been so kind and understanding and good, and his daughters had watched from the gloom of the doorway with the warm, rosy light of the fire on their faces and looked so _alive_ , and he’d lost himself back in the shelling and the too-bright spring light after spending days trying to force himself back into a soft, calm life of gardens and honey toast that no longer existed. _You know I’m never coming back._ _Stop holding onto stupid, childish dreams._

He’d wept.

She’d understood.

She’d stopped writing.

For a long time, there’s nothing.

And then, one quiet day behind the lines, a reinforcement disturbs the peace of the meadow.

Schofield’s lying on his back in the long, frost-tipped grass, twiddling a wilted bluebell between his fingers against the sky with the pale winter sunlight playing on his lashes. The wind has swept away the snow that’s been falling for the last week, and the clouds are watery, and his head is silent. Hollow. The numbness is worse than the pain. He’s often wished he could be more like the mad, screaming men with their cheeks wet with tears. At least then he’d have something more than this awful, endless quiet.

And then, a shadow falls over his light and a man begins to piss against a tree.

Schofield rolls his head against the earth and raises himself up just enough to see the back of the offending stranger through the stalks. His voice croaky and soft from disuse, he opens his mouth and forces out, “do you mind?”

The other Lance Corporal whips around and Schofield thanks the small mercies that he’d already finished his business. “Oh,” he says, finally finding him hidden among the winter-dry wildflowers. He offers a droopy, bashful grin, his cheeks dimpling. “Didn’t fancy the latrines this morning, y’know.”

Schofield’s happy to leave it at that, and he’s starting to settle back down when the other man continues. “D’you know what, though, you’ve got the right idea here, haven’t you? Right peaceful, isn’t it?” Without waiting for an invitation, he plops himself down beside him and rests his forearms on his knees, smiling out at the field before him. Schofield opens one eye and raises a brow, looking up at him and finding himself caught somewhere between quiet joy at being spoken to so openly and panicked by the sudden company.

“Back there,” the other Lance Corporal continues, gesturing towards the mess of tents behind them, “one of the lads ‘as picked off about a thousand fleas and they’re all cracking them into bits. Blood everywhere. It’s disgusting. Had to get away.” Taking in the sun-washed meadow, he adds, “This _is_ lovely, isn’t it? Bit _dead_ but… I’ve been trapped with this group of replacements for days, ever since I arrived, and they haven’t let go of me long enough for me to see much of anything.” Somewhere along the way, Schofield lets his eyes drift shut, unexpectedly soothed by the sound of someone just _talking_. For the first time in months, he feels like he can breathe, like he can smell the frost on the breeze and hear the voices of the men chattering and laughing beyond the meadow. “They’re friendly blokes, y’know, but they think that just ‘cause we all got here at the same time that we’re not allowed to socialise with anyone else, ‘specially not the _scary_ veterans. I’m Blake, by the way.”

He takes a moment to reply, just lies there with his eyes closed, feeling Blake’s expectant smile warming up his face. Finally, he opens his eyes and looks up at him. “Schofield,” he replies, voice sounding so thin and fragile next to Blake’s open cheerfulness. Blake offers his hand; Schofield takes it. It almost burns him to feel another person’s skin on his. “You get used to the fleas.”

“I reckon that’s almost worse. I’m so clean, aren’t I? Only been here a week. They’re going to smell fresh meat and be all over me – _oy, Charlie, come’n have a sniff at this one, he’s right lovely._ ” He says the last bit in a high, crackly voice.

Schofield hums a laugh and feels his face crease into a smile, like a crack in old plaster – and the feeling is so unfamiliar, so forgotten, that it makes him freeze. And the moment his head catches up to the smile, the moment he realises what’s happened, all the ice and quiet and emptiness seep back in, and the life leeches back out, and he’s left more tired than he’s ever been. He flicks his eyes up and Blake is still smiling, small and forgotten, as he gazes out at the rolling fields. “I’m a veteran,” he says, voice drifting weakly out into the air and fading into the watery light.

“Don’t tell my mates back there that,” Blake replies without missing a beat, glancing down at him with a teasing smile. “They’ll be tryin’ to tear me away before you eat my bones.”

Schofield smiles back, and this time it doesn’t feel so tiring. This time, it feels more like sunlight seeping back in through the cracks. “They’re just frightened,” he says quietly, and he’s relieved when Blake seems to know he means the veterans without him having to explain it. “You learn quite quickly not to grow too close to the replacements. They never make it very far.”

At that, Blake is silent for a long moment. Schofield is just beginning to worry that he’s pushed away the one person willing to reach out his hand to him, and beginning to accept that it’s for the best, when he glances down at him and asks, so achingly simple, so unbearably _kind_ , “The Somme?”

 _The Somme…_ Schofield nods, the movement so small it’s almost lose to the rattling of the grass stalks. “Thiepval,” he replies, voice tight and shaky. He feels his mouth beginning to downturn and he clenches his jaw, sucking in a breath through his nose.

“I’ve never seen battle. Always thought it might be exciting.”

“It’s not.”

“No.”

A long pause. The wind breathes quietly through the grass, a peaceful, soundless exhalation.

“How are you a Lance Corporal already?” Schofield asks at last, his curiosity drifting through the haze of fear like a whisper of sunshine through a cloudbank. He tilts his head against the earth to look up at him again. It reminds him just how much time has passed, reminds him just how long he’s been stagnant in this spaceless, empty fog. He’s been a Lance Corporal a long time.

“Oh,” Blake says with a small smile, tucking his chin into his scarf. He sounds faintly embarrassed. “Well, Sanders didn’t think any of my other mates were up to scratch, did he? Came straight up to me – _heard you was the sociable sort,_ he said, _here’s twelve men_. Yes, sir. I figured you must’ve had a hell of a shelling before my lot arrived. Short of non-coms.”

Schofield nods jerkily, letting out a tight hum of confirmation. The shells explode behind his eyelids. The men scream along.

“Must’ve been, to give the likes of me a chevron,” he adds, gently nudging Schofield. “Gonna go mad with power.”

He lets out a huff of laughter, smiling against the frosty air.

“Gonna work my way up to General within a month and then you’ll all be sorry.”

Schofield laughs, really laughs, and the sound of it is like the crack of a rifle against his ears. Blake grins down at him, letting out little hiccups of laughter along with him like he’s pleased to get this sort of reaction, and for the first time, smiling doesn’t feel like dying. He beams back up at him, frail and numb and lost but smiling nonetheless. Blake gazes back at him, eyes kind and gentle and warm, and he feels his own heart begin to beat again through the fog.

Blake keeps talking, about home, about his mother and his brother, about the golden countryside in the summertime, and Schofield settles back against the dry, dead grass and listens. He talks about all the times he and the other choirboys drank the wine cup dry at communion, and about the path that runs alongside the river where the ducks lay their eggs in spring, and about the day the local constable chased him onto the roof of the post office for pinching his helmet on a dare – and as he talks, Schofield closes his eyes and nods and laughs along, and after a while he feels like he can see the golden morning light filtering through the lace curtains and sprinkling dappled shadows against the kitchen wall, and smell the herbs in the front garden that they bake into cakes whenever someone in the village has a cold, and hear the voices of Blake and his brother shouting through the warm shadows of the afternoon. He can picture their homestead against the hedges and hills, and hear the sheep bleating outside the bedroom window, and feel the sunshine against his skin.

He can breathe.

After that, he softens.

After that, he speaks.

After that, he smiles.

 _Thiepval,_ they say, in the hushed, ruined voices of ghosts, and the fear still aches.

 _Blake,_ they say, in the fond, bemused voices of spectators watching the veteran trail after the reinforcement and the reinforcement trail after the veteran, and the soft, quiet happiness is stronger than the fear.

The devotion is stronger than the weak, tired half-memories of the Somme that used to pulse against the back of his eyes like the hands of a broken clock, and he feels himself become a disciple, a worshipper, a blind believer in the man who’d seen his trauma and pressed himself gently against the wound.

 _Scho,_ he says, and his voice is love and warmth and tenderness, and his friendship is easy and cheerful and soft, and his smile doesn’t flinch away from the shadows behind Schofield’s eyes, and he feels like a blind man given back his sight and a drowning man given back his breath.

He gives him back silence that doesn’t feel like emptiness, and sleep that doesn’t sound like screaming, and peace that doesn’t come with the sunshine and fade away with the clouds. He doesn’t ask or pry, and Schofield doesn’t tell, and it’s easy.

It’s good.

It’s safety.

It’s belonging.

It’s being.

He’d follow him anywhere.

He tells Blake’s brother _he saved my life,_ and it’s true. _Don’t let go of me,_ he’d said, and he hadn’t; _you have to jump,_ he’d said, and he had. But that isn’t what he means.

_I was lost and broken and adrift, and he saved me._

_I was half a ghost, and he gave me back my life._

_I was fumbling blindly through an empty grave, and he breathed sunlight back into my lungs._

_He saved my life._

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed, lovelies!! can you tell schofield and this movie mean the absolute world to me and make me soft? can u tell? 
> 
> check out my playlist as well if you'd like; it's under "schofield" on spotify ♡
> 
> bonus outtakes i didn't think fit into the flow of the piece:
> 
> 1\. after the line "it's being": 
> 
> Then comes the letter. Then comes the milk pail and the doll and the cherry trees. 
> 
> Then comes the nameless convoy of laughing men going to their death. Then comes the baby with no name and the burning church and the boy who couldn’t stay silent. Then comes the river and the song and the white dust on his shoulders, and the first wave he couldn’t save, and the Colonel who asked him, and what have you achieved? Who did you save? Will you be there again the next time, when they go over the ridge and no one is there to stop them? Will you head home now, the hero everyone will forget in a week, and go over yourself tomorrow? Was it worth it?
> 
> 2\. after the line "gonna work my way up to general in a month":
> 
> he's so young. he still thinks in terms of months.
> 
> 3\. after the line "unexpectedly soothed by the sound of someone just talking":
> 
> when someone else speaks to him, it feels claustrophobic. now, it feels free.


End file.
